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She opened an eye. She lay stretched out on hairy fabric that caught in her scales. A vast presence, white and curved like a huge dragon egg, gave off heat from a mouthlike opening in its side. Woof-woosh woof-woosh woof-woosh—the sound in her ears reminded her of Father when he got out of breath from his climbs up from the river. She rolled her head and saw a hominid, its back to her, working an apparatus that opened and closed like a dragon’s mouth, complete with folding griff at its sides.
A crackling and a glowing came from the huge egg’s mouth. She smelled burning charcoal. The heat increased, and she basked in it before she slept again.
She woke to a salubrious greasy smell, like the road-dwarf’s sausages, only more powerful.
A steaming double-handled iron pan appeared before her, filled with a greasy broth. She glanced around, saw a roof above held up by thick rounded beams. Doors wide enough to fit a full-grown dragon had been flung open to the summer air and light.
The faint smells of horse and goats interested her, but not half so much as the broth. She found enough strength to take two tonguefuls.
The hominid, standing so still, he might have been one of the timbers holding up the roof, watched her from a good dragon-dash away. Probably a male: he had prominent, angular features, a lean, narrow-hipped body, and a clean-shaven head covered with a thick film that reminded her of the high mountain rocks with winter lichens she and Auron had climbed.
An elf.
Father’s stories about the killing prowess of the elves came back to her in a rush of imagery. . . .
He stayed away. There were windows and the wide doors closer to her than he—though with her body feeling limp and drained, she wondered if she could even manage to right herself for a dash—
A mist-colored horse at the other end of the interior regarded her warily. This place was divided into a number of smaller chambers along a central alley.
Another sip of the hot liquid, and she felt newly hatched, despite the strange surroundings full of disconcertingly straight lines.
Wistala examined her wounds. Cracked scales and any number of brown-stained injuries marked every limb. The brown stains puzzled her. They didn’t smell of dried blood, but a sharper smell. But stained or no, the wounds were certainly healing up nicely. She rolled onto her other side and saw that a terrible rend in her saa interior had been sewn like a hominid garment.
Perhaps the elf was healing her to make better sport of her later.
She rested a few minutes, then had a little more broth, rested and then lapped, until finally by midday, the pan had been licked clean. Then she slept, deep and dreamless.
After sundown, she dragged herself—standing hurt her wounded limbs too much—to a central stone cistern, where she smelled water fed by an outlet coming down from the roof beams. She drank deep. Then she slept against the stone.
A gentle cough woke her. The elf stood there, perhaps twice the length of her body away. He squatted, toadlike with his gentle eyes and long, folded limbs.
This time she didn’t tremble. Whoever he was, whatever his aim, she read in his eyes that he meant her no harm. He rocked on his haunches. It took her a moment to realize he was inching forward, putting one or the other leather-strap-bound foot after another an almost imperceptible length.
The horse didn’t seem to like her presence at the trough. He expelled an angry breath and stamped, chewed on a wooden rail in a sidelong manner. Wistala thought horses timid creatures, but this one seemed to be eager to get out of its alcove and at her.
The elf reached one long hand out, palm empty and toward her. He tickled her under the chin. She couldn’t help her griff lowering a little or her fringe standing on end, not with her nostrils full of the terrible odors of elf and horse from that day she lost Auron.
She watched his eyes. They never seemed to be the same color. Brown when they looked at one of the beams holding up the roof, a dull red color when they glanced down at the bricks paving the floor, green when they briefly rested on her. Now, looking at the water in the trough, they became dark and reflective.
The elf pulled up a handful of water, let it trickle through his fingers. “Anua,” a voice like a soft fall of rain said. “Anua.”
She tried making the sound in her throat. “Ennuh,” she managed.
The elf brought a handful of water to her mouth. “Anu sah.” He put his lips to his palm and sucked up the water.
“Ehnu-ssa,” Wistala repeated, and lapped up some water.
His mouth crinkled. “Anu sah!” he said, pushing a wave of water to her. She took another tongueful.
“Ahnu-ssa,” she said, and nosed a wave at him. She splashed him a little by accident, but he didn’t seem to mind. Next he taught her his name: Rainfall.
After that, Rainfall drank with his mouth turned up at the corners.
In the following days, as her strength returned, they made slow progress with her Elvish. He learned her name, though he preferred to call her by the familiar Tala, as it was easier for him to pronounce. Dragon traditions weighted lightly on her. She took her lessons in turn, naming things around the stable.
Shortly, she dragged herself outside. The mountaintops to the east were just visible through a part in the trees. She must have come some length down the river, perhaps as far west as Tumbledown, though the hills here were covered with grass and rock, and trees seemed to grow thickly only out of the wind.
That she’d come so far without drowning was as miraculous as if she’d sprouted her wings. Yet she had not the tiniest memory of being in the water beyond the leap off the cliff with the dogs dragging at her.
